The Deacon's Bench
Photo: by Daniel Estrin
This is pretty intriguing. Who knew?
On Christmas Eve, thousands of Christians from around the world flocked to Bethlehem to celebrate at the traditional birthplace of Jesus. But a few miles up the road at a church in Jerusalem, something unexpected took place at Midnight Mass: the church became crowded with Jews.
Throngs of Israeli Jews clamored at the gate of the Dormition Abbey about an hour and a half early to get a good seat at Midnight Mass. Seats were snatched up the moment the doors opened, and Israelis sat cross-legged on every available inch of the mosaic floor.
They were there not as believers, but as voyeurs.
“It’s a nice show,” said one dreadlocked Israeli university student in attendance. “It’s a good choreography, you know. I can appreciate a good show.”
“We’re here to share the happiness of different holidays than ours,” another student said. “It’s also just fun.”
Hundreds of Israelis were in attendance, many of them university students wearing dreads and piercings and funky gold leggings. One said he was attending for an ethnographic study — an assignment for anthropology class…
…Father Gregory, the abbot, said he has a strong awareness of the fact that those who attend are the people of Israel, or what he calls the original people of God.
But he is careful not to proselytize. Israeli law restricts missionary activity in the country, and the Catholic Church also discourages it. Centuries of forced conversion by Christians in the past have made Jews and Catholics sensitive to this.
Father Gregory and his monks, for their part, say they regularly experience harassment by fundamentalist Jews who spit at them.
So what does a clergyman preach to a church full of Jews on Christmas Eve?
“I always try to preach quite carefully,” said Father Gregory Collins. “I talk about the Jewish roots of Jesus. I do stress that, as Christians, we believe Jesus is the son of God and the Messiah, and I acknowledge that most of the people in the church don’t believe that. But I think it’s not time for theological discussions. It’s time for celebrating the birth of Christ. And the area where we can all agree is Jesus’ summary of Jewish law: love God and your neighbor as yourself.”
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